Systems and methods herein generally relate to providing adaptive power states in a distributed raster image processing environment.
Continuous feed printers operate at high speed and require very powerful groups of computers to process data, which allows the printers to print without stopping. Specialization of roles of processing devices improves efficiency by distributing work between multiple computers, and such systems are sometimes referred to as a “distributed DFE” (where DFE is used for digital front end).
The distributed DFE has resulted in a useful model with the following features. A frontend computer runs a user interface and processes all gateways to and from host computers submitting and getting print jobs and printer status requests. Raster image processing computers (sometimes referred to as “farmhands”) rasterize the output into printer compatible output (e.g., bitmaps or rasterized video). These raster image processing computers have the most processing intensive workload. Additionally, backend computers manage the transfer of the rasterized video data to the printer. Maintaining all such individual computers in a full-power, ready state results in substantial electrical supply and cooling costs and may not always be necessary.